


Fear Itself

by oswinry



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-08
Updated: 2019-01-08
Packaged: 2019-10-06 20:13:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17351852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oswinry/pseuds/oswinry
Summary: "I am the Doctor, and I am afraid." A post-"Hide" conversation, and the dangers of being a companion.





	Fear Itself

_"'I am the Doctor, and I am afraid.' You said that. So, Doctor, what are you afraid of? You eat monsters for breakfast. You're a big old showman, is what you are, wanting to make that monster feel good about itself. What are you really afraid of?"_  
  
"Oh, you know. The big Bad Wolf. The Pandorica. The...Girl Who Can. Stories, I suppose. Best weapons in the world!"  
  
"Yeah, okay, storybooks. I get that. But really, Doctor, you sounded scared, back in that pocket universe. Properly scared. You're never scared, not of aliens. Or, well, you never show it."  
  
"Hello, collapsing universe? Certain death in under four minutes? All of time unraveling? I had reasons!"  
  
"Please. That's just your M.O."  
  
They are in Pete's World, and Rose is a vision, beautiful in that flirty maid's dress, and he's having a hard time keeping his eyes and hands to himself. She can tell, he knows it, but she doesn't mention it quite. She just flirts, outrageously, and asks things of him he really oughtn't even be considering, and over and over he finds himself saying yes. Yes, we'll go find your father. Yes, let's go to the party. (Yes, Mickey can come along.)  
  
The point being, she is dangerous, and shining, and here in this parallel universe he can feel the golden threads of time surrounding her more strongly than usual, a dancing cocoon that bedazzles her hair and reddens her lips and sparkles in her eyes.  
She is irresistible, and he loves her (as a friend, a quiet voice in the back of his mind whispers), and someday, if she keeps this up, she will bring down the walls of the universe.  
  
(Also in this universe is a girl named Sally, Sally Claire. She is engaged, and getting married in the morning, and she is trapped in a monster. Just yesterday, her fiancé Dan tried to peek at her wedding dress. "Oi, no peeking till my last name changes!" she'd shrieked, and he'd given up with a grin.  
  
"You've always hated your last name, Pink."  
  
"At least it's not Oswin," she retorted.  
  
"...Yet," he cackled.  
  
Then she is placed inside a hard metal suit, and never knows she is trapped until the last.)  
  
_"I really was scared of the big bad wolf as a kid, though. We had a story, my people. Red Riding Hood was–well, something unpronounceable–and she went crossing timestreams when she met a large and hungry Reaper. The Wolf. He ate her. She regenerated inside him, and he burst into flame and burned a galaxy. She died in agony."_  
  
"Your people were terribly anxious to make sure you didn't wander off, weren't they? And bloodthirsty. Didn't you get nightmares?"  
  
"Oh, loads. Didn't stop me."  
  
"But Doctor, you're changing the subject, disturbing childhood tales and all. What were you so scared of?"  
  
The Pandorica is a small prison that holds a monster, a trickster, someone who dropped from the sky and stole a life. It holds Amelia Pond, and Rory Williams has been stolen, and he is chained to the box for two thousand years. He doesn't begrudge a moment, and when she steps out and kisses him, it is all worth it.  
  
It is even worth it when they have a child and the real trickster, the intended prisoner of the Pandorica, spills the blood of innocents for them. They could stop it, perhaps, but they don't. Who would? Who could?  
  
(Rory is waiting patiently through World War II, counting down the years, when the Germans storm the museum the Pandorica is housed in. They plan to burn it. A young recruit, a woman pressed into war, warns him. She has heard of his long vigil, somehow, and finds it within her heart to sympathize. She helps him, and dies in the fire. "Ich heiße Klara Ostwein," she tells him before he goes, quickly and with piercing clarity, and he thinks he catches "Clara" but he can't understand German and he _has to get Amy out_.)  
  
_"I suppose...I'm afraid of ghosts."_  
  
"You weren't afraid of Hila."  
  
"Not those ghosts. Not the...spooky, wailing, oh-no-the-clock's-moving-backwards kind. No, the ghosts that are hidden in the mist. The ghosts that are monsters. The ghosts that love and make babies and have familiar faces."  
  
"You mean us. The companions."  
  
"No. Yes! No. Not really. I fear...what I make them. What I make you."  
  
Amy has broken Rory's heart, sweet Rory who guarded her for two thousand years.  
Rory has broken Amy's heart, fiery Amy who tore time apart for him.  
This is all wrong, all wrong, he thinks.  
  
So he takes a gamble, and manipulates them, just a little, and soon enough they're back together. That's what matters. They're what matters. Nothing else.  
  
(In Oswin Oswald's voice, he hears the echo of a face in a rearview mirror and the smack of hands upon a glass and the whispery cries of a girl who was getting married in the morning. He hears it, but then he always hears the voices of the dead when he meets a new Companion, warning him off.  
  
_Don't make her like us_ , they say, and he knows the real Martha, the real Rose, the real Sarah Jane would protest–but they're not here.  
  
She dies, but Amy and Rory are safe, so he counts his blessings and forces out the body count climbing higher in his head.)  
  
_"You don't make us anything. We choose."_  
  
"Do you, though? Do you really?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
"Ah, well, what's frightening. You...choose this. Choose me. And you...die, or leave, or kill, or destroy. And I can't stop you from becoming like me. I fear me."  
  
"Well, Doctor. I'm not afraid of you."  
  
"That's good, because if you were, you might not be willing to try the delicacies on planet Raiboh. They smell like rotten fish but taste like cotton candy."  
  
"I don't believe that."  
  
"Believe me! Geronimo!"  
  
They have a lovely time on planet Raiboh. Clara tastes the rotten-fish-treat and declares the taste not worth the stench. He protests that she has no sense of adventure.  
  
"Oi, I flew off with you in your snogbox, didn't I?"  
  
He hastily stands corrected. Clara nonetheless buys more of the cotton candy and gives it out to a few children looking hungrily at the stalls. They move on to a lovely little boutique in New New Paris.  
  
(Her name is Clarin, this time, and just days before she foiled a candy-poisoning plot by eating some herself to prove its deadliness. She asked for a Doctor in her delirium. She tells him to run.)  
  
_"Clara, you asked me once what scared me."_  
  
"Yeah, and you said it was you."  
  
"I said it was me, but I was lying. It was you. It was...all of you. You...died for me. The–sheer bloody guts of that–"  
  
"I did what I had to, Doctor."  
  
"Yeah, but–you killed for me, too. They all have."  
  
"It's worth it."  
  
"Is it? Clara, you're bringing the government of Gallifrey down around our ears, and I don't care. Doesn't that frighten you?"  
  
"Not anymore."  
  
"Has it ever?"  
  
"No."  
  
Hila Tacorian is grateful. Emma could have died. He is terrified.  
  
"She's just an ordinary girl. Isn't that enough?"  
  
No, he thinks. She can't be. They drive each other to extremes. No other companion has done that. Or maybe they all have. He tries not to think about it.  
  
_"I'm afraid–"he repeats, "–of the big Bad Wolf."_

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed!  
> You can find myself and my writing over on [tumblr](https://actual-bill-potts.tumblr.com).


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